In search of better audience analytics, some publishers are opting to build their own tools. But building custom software doesn’t have to be expensive. Just ask Dazed in the U.K. Dazed Group has been trying to get a better understanding of Web analytics to inform its content. Recently though, the British fashion and culture outlet became frustrated with Google Analytics and its limitations.

Just about any publisher worth its salt these days boasts a content studio, thanks to the rising demand for native ad programs. They’ve got a very good reason to: The market for online sponsored content, or native advertising, is growing. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau U.K., digital sponsorship, advertisement features, in-feed and native distribution tools were w ...

Politico is the latest U.S. publisher to contemplate international expansion. But translating its national politics coverage of Washington, D.C., to the supranational European Union doesn’t promise to be easy. For the challenge that lies ahead, it’s taking a page out of the Huffington Post playbook: Like the HuffPost, Politico is partnering with a local publisher to give it a head start.

Podcasting has never been more popular than it is today, bolstered in part by breakthrough hits like “Serial.” Now, publishers everywhere are attempting to capitalize on the medium’s momentum. But few so far have made quite the audio investment that Monocle magazine has. Founded in 2007 in London as a lifestyle magazine covering global affairs, business and high culture for th ...

Clippet News has emerged as the U.K.’s first serious contender offering on-demand, audio news for young mobile audiences. The London-based startup was launched in September and comes with an impressive pedigree: James MacLeod, grandson of Rupert Murdoch, is a co-founder. Each day Clippet offers a selection of 10 news stories digested into one-minute audio clips.

Publishers on the hunt for digital media are increasingly turning to paywalls or metered-access systems. The challenge remains the same: How can you erect a pay barrier — even if you call it a “membership” — when people can find comparable content from competitors for free? But the equation changes if a paywall is countrywide.

The rising use of ad-blocking software is an under-the-radar issue for publishers. Some estimates, which are sketchy, say over 25 percent of U.K. users and 50 percent of German users employ ad blockers. Some French companies have prepared to sue AdBlock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software, while others have taken a wait-and-see approach.

Digiday’s Digital Publishing Summit Europe is underway in Monte Carlo, where executives meet to find solutions to their long list of digital pain points. In that environment, deciding which fires to fight is a challenge in itself. With that in mind, we asked five of the attendees: What’s the biggest tech trend you’re focused on in 2015? Here’s what they had to say.

A number of top publishers are clamoring to grow their audience development positions in search of more digital growth. Now, Condé Nast U.K. is the latest publisher to start the search for audience development talent. With 44 people across both digital development and digital sales reporting into him, Condé Nast U.K.’s digital director Wil Harris has a lot of plates to spin.

In a multi-device world, only an unreconstructed Luddite would argue against having responsive design. Or so you’d think. While top U.K. publishers like The Guardian and BBC have fully responsive designs, many others — MailOnline, Telegraph Online and The Independent — haven’t gone the responsive route.

British publishers are trying to make their sites more readable on mobile devices, but doing so can be a long and disruptive process. Few of the top U.K. news sites have yet to take the plunge into a fully responsive site redesign. That said, the BBC, Guardian and Metro are among the early adopters.

Most of the positive comments referred to the look and feel of the site, using words like ‘clear’, ‘fresh’ and ‘uncluttered’. In terms of specific features, some people mentioned the "Most Read" box and others mentioned the new "time stamps" as aspects they liked.

The Economist can’t live on ad revenue alone. Over 50 percent of its overall revenue, £167 million ($251 million), is tied to subscriptions. Increasingly, doing so means mastering the mechanics of programmatic advertising and the art of slicing and dicing data to put specific offers in front of different groups of people.

The rise of the programmatic ad buying was coupled with the emergence of agency trading desk models. There has been movement away from the original conception of trading desks, as clients and others have complained about a lack of transparency. Having recently left the U.K. agency world, one media executive had an inside view of agencies as they developed their trading desk mo ...

Ad fraud is the drunk guest at the programmatic party whom everybody wants to leave but nobody’s quite sure how to make sure he does. It’s no different in the U.K., where standards bodies and trade associations are wringing their hands over the problem and trying how, without causing a fuss, to usher fraud out the door.

In five shorts years mobile readership has grown from below 20 percent of the U.K. total digital publishing audience to nearly 50 percent for many publishers today, as several of them reported to Digiday last year. As these consumption patterns have evolved, so too has the role of the mobile editor.

At a time when publishers are looking to rely less on display ad revenue, one tech publication is casting its lot with e-commerce, betting it can turn its consumer tech reviews into direct moneymaking through taking a cut of purchases it drives. TechRadar, which is published by U.K.-based Future, has redesigned its site to emphasize this drive.

Companies everywhere are hoping they won’t be the next big firm to slip into irrelevance by ignoring the changes happening around them. To do their part to help others (for a fee), Condé Nast International is offering the recently rebranded services of Wired Consulting. Wired Consulting has been up and running for just under three years and was “relaunched” in September 2014.

U.K.-based 65twenty, publisher of The Lad Bible, is a clear hit among millennial males, having cornered the pop culture market in the U.K. with millions of followers on Facebook. Its native advertising policy, however, is a bit of a murkier affair. The Lad Bible has been diversifying the content it offers on the back of its success.